Posted on 10/16/2005 8:06:23 PM PDT by Coleus
Guilty. But it was a good one, eh? Besides...you know how Lugar and Frist are just sitting on LOST, biding their time, and waiting for the opportune moment to sneak it through the Senate, since it is already out of the Foreign Relations Committee.
God, I miss Jesse Helms.
And any intelligent...and patriotic... CEO, would have simply looked at the solid reasoning of the Reagan decision, and said...why is this back, and who is responsible, and where is my Guillotine for the miscreants?
It isn't just Kofi, but the Socialists within the U.S. pressing hard for this.
The money quote from Tom DeWeese reprinted above:
The fight over the Law of the Sea Treaty is really an ancient one between those who believe in the concepts of private property and free markets and those who can’t conceive of anything not being controlled by government.The seas have been free for the entire history of mankind, except when controlled by a dictator. We’ve fought pirates and Hitler to keep them open. Why would we now surrender that freedom to mindless, faceless bureaucrats who covet power and care nothing for our rights?
I hate those Socialists within the U.S. I don't have any use for the U.N. and think the Law of the Sea Treaty is a terrible idea.
--and it probably always will be. It was negotiated and introduced to the Senate by Clinton in '94 (like Kyoto) but instead of being voted down the LOST is just well, lost.
(from here) As of May 12, 2006, the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and its 1994 Agreement remained pending before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The update cited came out June 2, '06, and maybe that's what should have been used to start a new thread instead of this walk down memory lane. I like to gripe about the UN as much as the next guy, but anyone who's got their sphincters in a wad over this thing has just given themselves a dozen years of GI problems for nothing. Just MHO.
It also indicates that Condileeza Rice is behind it, along with Dick Cheney, and a number of other officers indicate that the President himself backs it...but rather coyly.
The intention is manifest...to run it through the Senate when it...or those who care about the free market aren't paying attention, or can be hornswoggled, and get it passed based on the urgings of the "unanimous" big-wigs.
by Paul Ross The thread is hardly "ancient"
OK fine. The topic is not now nearly as ancient as it once was; in fact, it was ancient before it was new! As long as you're into stuff from last October, here one from August 19: Illegal Immigrants Defile Washington Treasures, Whitehouse Ablaze.
My sympathies to your proctologist.
My sympathies to yours, at least I stayed on topic.
You sure haven't shown it, and then you disprove it when you contend:
but anyone who's got their sphincters in a wad over this thing has just given themselves a dozen years of GI problems for nothing.
Hello, have you been paying attention...or are you too busy getting your own bowel movements to pass?
This socialist monstrosity was approved out of the Lugar-run Senate Foreign Relations Committee...unanimously. The administration is clearly trying to sneak it through. Wake up and smell the coffee. This is big time serious.
Clinton appointees?
Well in fairness, some of them are just drones and they are doing as they are told. At any rate, I think you are correct--just be ready for some to show up here and call you a tin-foil hat wearing nut. (But I know you can take it).
That is a serious question that should be posed persistently to the Vice President.
The challenge is that we need to remain vigilant on this because the enemy is not in the least repentent or surrendering despite it being stymied so far. E.g., it is being reported just how stealthy...persistent...and devious is the process being used to get this ratified... Check this 2004 article. And keep in mind...despite this...it was brought back in 2005, and now again! It's sitting in Frist's lap, and who knows how much pressure and persuasion is being brought on him to be influenced...
THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: GOP in sneak move to pass U.N. treatyCritics say 'Law of the Sea' would cripple defense, help terrorists
By J. Michael Waller, Insight Magazine, April 20, 2004A United Nations treaty awaiting confirmation before the Senate, national security experts warn, would, if approved, cripple the U.S. Navy, empower potential enemies including China, make the nation vulnerable to submarine cruise-missile attack, and help terrorists.
Nonetheless, momentum has been building stealthily in the Senate to ratify the treaty. And this time Republicans can't point fingers at their liberal Democratic colleagues or even at the former Clinton administration.
The culprits behind the sneak move, Capitol Hill sources say, are senior Republican senators and key figures in the administration of President Bush.
At issue is the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST, which has been in the works since the 1970s, when the Soviet Union and the so-called Non-Aligned Movement tried to use the United Nations to wrest control of the seas from the United States and its allies.
Under LOST, a global U.N. agency called the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, would take control of the world's oceans, seven-tenths of the earth's surface. The ISA would not be accountable to dues-paying members but would be a self-financing entity imposing a tax on countries that exploit natural resources on the ocean floor.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan refused to sign the treaty, officially called the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas, UNCLOS. But President Bill Clinton signed it in 1994, claiming that provisions that attack U.S. interests had been changed, and asked the Senate to ratify it.
The Republican-controlled Senate sat on it. Today, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has been quietly but forcefully pushing LOST through the ratification process under a sense of priorities that mystifies some of his colleagues.
Lugar's committee has given LOST precedence over consideration of other pending international agreements to fight weapons proliferation and terrorism. In October 2003 the liberal Republican held two days of hearings and permitted only treaty supporters to testify.
After a State Department official working on the Senate staff drafted the resolution of ratification, Senate sources tell Insight, the committee "refused" to provide other Senate armed services and intelligence committees with the text and opposed a State Department briefing sought by an Intelligence Committee staffer.
Without listing names of those present, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, by unanimous consent, advised passage of the treaty. Senate sources say proponents planned to bring LOST before the full Senate without debate for a voice vote that would have shielded lawmakers from certain public wrath.
State Department officials and Vice President Dick Cheney say they support the treaty because it provides an international legal framework for competition for the oceans' resources.
A U.S. ambassador stated in 2002 that Washington supported ratification, saying, "We intend to work with the U.S. Senate to move forward on becoming a party."
Apparently President Bush, preoccupied with waging the war on terrorism and winning a second term in office, had never even heard of the treaty until earlier this year, when conservative friends brought it to his attention, sources close to the president say. By that time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "unanimously" had recommended that the treaty be ratified even though its chairman never allowed a single critic to explain why the U.N. convention was a bad idea.
The treaty appeared ready to sail through the Senate without the customary discussion and troubleshooting until a handful of conservatives ran a sword through it in March. Some met with President Bush and alerted him about their concerns.
"There is an element within the Bush administration that wants this treaty ratified," said Free Congress Foundation president Paul Weyrich, who is appealing to grass-roots activists to show their opposition.
The pro-LOST element, according to Weyrich, gained "the upper hand."
Not for long. Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, blew the whistle loud and long, and with a handful of others, magnified by talk-radio hosts including Rush Limbaugh and online news services such as WorldNetDaily.com, alerted grass-roots conservatives.
Sen. James Inhofe heard the call. Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the Oklahoma Republican jumped into action, claiming jurisdiction over LOST because the convention governed environmental issues and his committee had not been alerted.
He invited two informed witnesses: Peter Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who had been following the development of the treaty for more than 30 years; and Gaffney, a former senior Reagan Pentagon official who has dissected other flawed treaties, including the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, and was a major force behind the discrediting and ultimate abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missil Treaty. Unlike Lugar, Inhofe invited both sides to testify.
That hearing, held March 24, blew a shotgun blast into the treaty's chest and all but ensured that it would not reach the Senate floor in the near future. Leitner, who had been part of the U.S. LOST negotiating team, testified as a private citizen who had written a book about the treaty:
"This seriously flawed document was rightly rejected by President Reagan, as it embodies a wide range of precedents, obligations and restrictions that are deleterious to American national- and economic-security interests. Indeed, the treaty and its many precedent-setting provisions is a direct assault on the sovereignty of the United States and the supremacy of the nation-state as the primary actor in world affairs."
As worded, LOST would deny the United States the right to intercept terrorist vessels or proliferators, according to Leitner. The President's Proliferation Security Initiative, designed to battle proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with as little effect on commerce as possible, would be illegal under the treaty.
"This U.S.-led, multinational program of high-seas interdiction and vessel boarding is barred by the Law of the Sea Treaty yet it is our overriding national-security interest to execute," Leitner said.
"Ratification of the treaty would effectively gut our ability to intercept the vessels of terrorists or hostile foreign governments even if they were transporting nuclear weapons. We must ensure that we are not binding the government of the United States to a legal regime that makes us more vulnerable and trades the lives of our innocent civilians for the sake of participating in yet another unnecessary treaty."
Even worse, according to Leitner, is what he calls "the creation of yet another international court where the United States or our citizens can be dragged before politically motivated jurists to adjudicate and set penalties."
The treaty imposes limitations "on measures we might take to ensure our national security and homeland defense. If, for instance, foreign vessels operating on the high seas do not fit into one of three categories (i.e., they are engaged in piracy, flying no flag or transmitting radio broadcasts), LOST would prohibit U.S. Navy or Coast Guard vessels from intercepting, searching or seizing them," Gaffney testified.
So who could be behind such a scheme?
"The most vigorous supporters of the treaty are largely a constellation of narrow single-interest groups that are willing to overlook treaty shortcomings as long as their pet rock is included," Leitner says.
And the supporters are not just left-wing activists and bureaucrats. Many in the oil industry favor the treaty as a way of providing an internationally accepted regime for underseas drilling. The Navy, still dominated by admirals who received stars for political correctness under the Clinton administration, supports the evenhandedness of a multilateral approach to governing the seas.
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, CRS, of the Library of Congress, "The increasing number of claims made by other states over offshore high-seas areas -- such as territorial sea, fishing zones, economic zones -- were expected to limit freedom of navigation to an unacceptable extent and increase the likelihood of international disputes over access to the world's oceans."
LOST limits areas "over which states may claim jurisdiction" and "protects high-seas freedoms" throughout states' 200-mile exclusive economic zones and "innocent passage" through territorial seas, as long as those activities (in the words of the treaty) are not "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state."
That's all well and good, military analysts say, but the United States "already benefits" from these provisions "on the basis of customary international law," according to the CRS report.
The State Department disagrees with treaty critics.
"As the world's leading maritime power, with the longest coastline and the largest exclusive economic zone in the world, the United States will benefit more than any other nation from the provisions of the convention," John F. Turner, assistant secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, told Inhofe's committee.
His specific testimony, with point-by-point rebuttals of critics, was one of the most comprehensive and specific pieces of political action yet produced under the Bush administration.
A professional environmental activist before his State Department appointment, Turner said that while LOST "addresses seven-tenths of the earth's surface," the ISA "does not."
He denied that LOST gives the United Nations the authority to levy taxes but acknowledged what he called "revenue-sharing provisions" and "administrative fees" for oil, gas and deep-seabed mining operations.
The ISA, he claimed, "has no authority or ability to levy taxes."
He urged senators not to worry about LOST's International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, saying that in a dispute "the United States would elect two forms of arbitration rather than the tribunal." And he stated that, under the 1994 Clinton amendments, "there is no transfer of wealth and no surrender of sovereignty."
Turner testified, "The mandatory technology-transfer provisions of the original convention were eliminated in the 1994 agreement" by President Clinton.
Even the navigational language in LOST is dangerous to U.S. interests. The CRS report, titled "The Law of the Sea Convention and U.S. Policy," says LOST compels submarines in territorial seas to "navigate on the surface and show their flags."
That requirement presents major problems for the United States. Among them, it would make American submarines vulnerable to attack by forcing them to reveal their locations by surfacing. It also effectively would prevent the growing fleet of U.S. and allied special-operations submarines from being used to infiltrate commandos into hostile areas. The current pre-9/11 language of LOST would handicap the United States in the global war on terrorism.
As for worries that the treaty might allow Beijing to exert control in the South China Sea, Turner was soothing: "China has consistently maintained that it respects the high-seas freedoms of navigation through the waters of the South China Sea."
Treaty proponents, including Turner, claim that the flawed parts of LOST were "fixed" in 1994.
In fact, the CRS report offers three pages of unresolved issues. Among them is a compulsory dispute-settlement requirement that the report says the Senate "has historically been reluctant to accept," a "still to be examined ... relationship between the various parts of the Convention and the body of current U.S. law" and unclear definitions of how the convention "defines and interprets" its principle that ocean resources "are the common heritage of mankind."
Meanwhile, administration officials have been unable to answer simple questions about all of this.
As Weyrich comments, "It is disturbing when the answer provided by the General Counsel to the question, 'Will Americans be stopped from searching suspicious foreign ships in our waters?' is, 'I don't know.'"
signing away sovereignty
Absolutely, we're together on that 1000%!
While we're on this topic of old (ancient but not ancient) news, it's awfully strange that you don't seem to care that undocumented aliens have set fire to the Whitehouse and a number of other federal buildings. Not that I want to question your loyalties or anything, but just where are your priorities anyway?
Unless you think the Red Coats are a risk of coming again, Mercy and Lands sakes!
And btw, 'hem. Those 4,000 soldiers...and General Ross... of the British Empire were not precisely "illegal aliens." They were soldiers, and an raiding force.Trivializing one of the early traumas of our nation's history from 1814...is not cool. Which hazard was cut short by divine intervention apparently as God chased the Red Coats out with a timely hurricane...but not before the damage was done...
Wait, going back 194 years is silly but going back 14 years is serious. I think I follow you now...
No. They are soldiers. Enemy combatants is the term for non-uniform irregulars...such as terrorists.
Wait, going back 194 years is silly but going back 14 years is serious. I think I follow you now...
Actually it goes back to Jimmy Carter who nearly had a chance to ratify it...which he would have in a flash. Reagan killed it in 1982, and with extreme prejudice. He fired its negotiators...but the Socialists aren't giving up.
It's revival started when Bush Sr. rehired one of the negotiators...a friend of Cheney... in 1990 to revisit some of the issues. This resulted in no treaty language changes whatsoever, just some worthless, unenforceable "understandings" that could easily be disavowed by the UN later. And the US negotiators long out of the picture... Clinton signed it in 1994. The Senate however could not give its vote...the two-thirds requirement...because it never went to the floor... Good old Jesse Helms bottled it up with hearings and no votes into eternity. But he finally had to retire. So now the vulnerable window of opportunity has re-opened. Lugar, an extreme and simpering globalist is the Foreign Relations Chair.
So, anyways, this is not just an 26 or 14 year old issue.
It is now. It is a present threat. Maybe you don't know what "present" means. It means today.
Just because a mortal national threat has a history longer than the attention span of the average two-year-old doesn't make it any less real or imminent.
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